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Early Childhood Education

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Success during the years of pre-k through third grade helps close the gap in school readiness; improves the chance for positive outcomes in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education; and saves government spending in the long run.

Evaluating early childhood education, however, is a difficult task. There are many elements at play: from assessing the home environment to addressing professional development challenges to determining the most effective way to measure quality. RAND Education examines a wide range of questions in order to help inform the debate on early childhood education:

What are effective programs for improving child outcomes (e.g., school readiness, later school success, health)?

How do you improve caregiver-child interactions?

If you invest in early childhood education, where will you see savings down the line (i.e., use of social programs and incarceration)?

Featured Researcher

Senior Policy Researcher

Jill Cannon is a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and a faculty member at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her work focuses on examining the relationship between early childhood programs and policies and child outcomes. She was previously a policy fellow at the Public Policy…

The investment in high-quality preschool may be paid back through improved outcomes during the school-age years and beyond. In addition to school readiness, they produce long-term benefits like lower rates of special education use, reduced grade repetition, and higher high school graduation rates.

The most comprehensive look to date at the benefits of early childhood education found that 102 of 115 programs improved at least one outcome for children beyond a statistical doubt. And the economic and social benefits continue to pay dividends, sometimes well into adulthood.

Returns of $2 to $4 were typical for every dollar invested in early childhood programs.

Research in Action

✓In California, RAND's work provided a blueprint for California policymakers to address the demonstrated shortcomings of their state's early childhood education system, despite fiscal constraints.

✓The government in Cincinnati, Ohio, used RAND research to evaluate its preschool system—in support of the city’s effort to expand access to and raise the quality of preschool programs.

✓RAND research has also helped the states of Delaware and California inform changes to their quality rating and improvement system (QRIS).

The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.